


everybody's scared of this place

by silver_and_exact



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Heart-to-Heart, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Post-Season/Series 01, actual healthy communication about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 18:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21001841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_and_exact/pseuds/silver_and_exact
Summary: Bill & Holden actually talk about their feelings post-season 1, and Bill calls Holden a Fucking Idiot a lot, but in a fond way.





	everybody's scared of this place

"What the fuck were you thinking?" said Bill, his hands curled into fists at Holden's bedside at the hospital.

He was relegating his voice to a low growl, which was kind of considerate, Holden supposed. Of course, there was still the fact that he had been calling him a thousand different variations on "fucking idiot" for the past ten minutes, which was less considerate, but probably warranted. Bill was wearing one of his insane salmon-colored shirts and a tie with a truly regrettable pattern—in short, he was in full form. Holden postulated that the crazier the other agent's clothes were, the more likely he was to flip his shit on someone. He had assembled some decent data to back his theory up.

Bill and Wendy had flown out to Vacaville as soon as they'd heard about what happened with Kemper, and the volley of in-flight drinks had done approximately jack shit to calm the older agent down. Traveling to California had made the day three hours earlier, which was around 27 hours longer than it should've been, and Bill wanted to know why the fuck he was Holden's emergency contact. The chain-reaction of this whole thing was getting ridiculous. How many emergency contacts were going to be called out to this fucking stupid hospital, and how many people could they get fired for letting this shit with Kemper go down? 

Holden hadn't said a word since Bill had come into his hospital room. Wendy just sat in the corner, looking drained and profoundly disappointed, but still immaculately put-together.

"Are you even listening to me, Holden? Of course not. You don't have to fucking listen to _anyone_, do you, because you already know how everything works. You're _special_."

Holden stared at Bill from his haze of Ativan. It was making him sleepy and pliant, two sensations he was not particularly used to. A small smile played across his lips—a smile which 100% would not have been there if he'd been unmedicated, because even at this point he was truly and viscerally horrified by what had happened, but it was a faraway feeling. And Bill was kind of scary sometimes. 

"Hey Bill, are you... worried about me?"

The kid had some fucking nerve. Tench opened his mouth to reply a few times, unable to find the words to adequately express how pissed he was, before he sighed and settled with the rather lackluster "You're a real asshole, you know that, Ford?"

"I know," said Holden, serene. 

Bill's shoulders slumped. He was tired and this whole thing was sad and weird and freaked him out, which was basically the default mood for the last year or so of his life working with the younger agent. And for all that, he didn’t particularly dislike it. It was just... a lot.

"Just get some damn rest," he said lowly, going for threatening, but without any real venom in the words, and stalked out of the room.

"We'll figure this out," said Wendy, resting a hand on Holden's arm before following him out, which made him think that he must really look like shit, since Wendy wasn't exactly the touchy-feely type.

.

.

.

.

. 

The car ride later that afternoon was tense, to say the least. The most alarming thing was perhaps that Bill asked Wendy to drive. He chainsmoked in the passenger seat, jaw set, staring out the window, and Holden sat in the back feeling like a child. They’d been forced to get a hotel by the airport for the night, and their plane back to Virginia didn’t leave until the next morning. The shoestring budget the FBI still had them on relegated Bill and Holden to a shared hotel room, and now that the younger agent’s anxiety meds were wearing off, he was mortified by the whole situation. The bottle of Valium rattled softly in his carry-on.

When they arrived at the hotel, Bill threw his suitcase on one of the single beds with more force than was strictly necessary, rifled through it, and disappeared to shower and brush his teeth. He hadn’t spoken to Holden since they’d left the hospital. When he came back, he was in a bath robe and the tee shirt and boxers he usually wore to bed. Holden thought that he had the air of a man about to deliver a eulogy.

“Alright,” Bill said wearily, sitting down on the end of his bed, “What’s been going on with you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re going to have to do better than that, Holden. We have to go back to work and I’m going to have to tell management _something_. Do you realize how bad all of this looks? I’m trying to make sure we still have jobs. You walked out on the OPR, for christ’s sake.”

Holden ran through the safest responses. What had happened to him recently that would be a potentially acceptable answer? He couldn't think of anything sufficient.

“Well, Debbie left. And I’m pretty sure she was cheating on me?” Holden supplied.

“I’m sorry, kid. That’s not all of it, though, don’t bullshit me.”

"I don't know, I guess I liked it better when it was just me and you in the basement, and road school, and Dr. Carr showing up once in a while. Now we've got a budget, and oversight, and... and _Gregg_."

"That's really great, that's beautiful, Holden—you miss the good old days. But you know what I mean. We need to talk about what happened at Vacaville.”

"Nothing to talk about," said Holden, shutting off. Bill had never seen someone's affect flatten so quickly. Something was seriously wrong with the other man, but it made him useful to the Bureau, and it put a bad taste in Bill's mouth that everyone just kind of ignored it. Tench wondered sometimes what was more exploitative, this business of interviewing killers or the fact that Holden was basically the canary in the behavioral science coalmine. 

"I'm not a fucking idiot, I know what a panic attack is. I don't give a fuck if you have them, christ, Holden. It's not _embarrassing, _if that's what you're getting all cagey about."

"Nothing happened in that room that warranted panic." 

"Can you just take yourself out of this for a minute and think about how fucking warped that is? You were alone in a room with an actual psychopath, no hyperbole, and that's at least part of what happened. That's enough for most people."

"He... touched me."

"_What._" He was going to kill Ed Kemper. He was going to be the coed killer killer.

"Jesus, not like—I mean, he hugged me. That's it. He wanted to know if we were... friends."

"Are you?" asked Bill, feeling a little like Wendy. 

"I don't know."

"Okay." He didn't even want to tackle that one. Bill tried to go for a casual tone.

"Has that ever happened to you before? Ever had a panic attack?"

"No," said Holden, and Bill knew right away that he was lying. Sometimes Holden went a little too far on the denial and came out with an overdone emotion on his face, especially when he was claiming he was unaffected by something. Just now, his lips had curved a little in a half-smile, but his eyes were cold and assessing.

Bill resisted the urge to shout or grab the other man by the shoulders and shake him, but experience had taught him that sometimes you just had to wait stuff like this out. He settled on giving Holden a long, dubious stare. It worked. Bill wasn't the head of the Behavioral Science Unit for nothing.

Holden folded. 

"Maybe I've had one. Or a couple. But it was always at home. It doesn't happen when I'm at work."

"It's not the kind of thing that you _plan_, you idiot. Jesus, Holden."

"I have it under control."

“That’s not how it works. You need to deal with your shit,” Bill said. Why the fuck did he have to explain this? The guy needed to go to therapy.

“I can’t go to therapy,” said Holden fiercely, sensing where Bill was headed. “I won’t_. _ I have it _under control._”

“Holden. How long has this been happening to you?” Bill asked slowly. 

Holden set his jaw and said nothing.

“I’m not going to _tell _anyone, I’m not going to _report you._ You need to fucking trust us—at least me and Wendy, or this isn’t going to work, kid.”

Holden took a deep breath.

“I’ve always wanted to be a detective,” he said. “Always, okay? I mean that. And I’ve always known that there’s no way in hell that anyone would let me into the Bureau… the way I am. They wouldn’t give me a job carrying a gun if they knew I needed a doctor for _anxiety._” He spat the last word out, visibly disgusted.

“Holden—”

“Listen. I’m just like these people we talk to. Just like them. You know, my dad was never in the picture. I pissed the bed until I was twelve. My mom _homeschooled _me for years and basically didn’t let me leave the house until she died and I went to live with my aunt and uncle. I look at these things that make other people sick, literally sick, and I just think they’re _interesting_.”

“You’re still a fucking idiot,” said Bill placidly. 

“What?”

“You heard me. You’re scared because you’re _good at your job_. You’re not going to _kill people_. Just because you don’t cry and hide your eyes whenever some bad shit comes across your desk doesn’t mean that you’re going to start cutting up girls. Your dad wasn’t there? My dad beat the shit out of me and my ma any time he wasn’t at work.”

“I’m sorry,” murmured Holden, taken aback.

Bill sighed. “And you know what? When I came home on my first break from basic training, I punched that son of a bitch right in the jaw, and I didn’t feel any better, because real life doesn’t work like that, kid. You do everything you think makes sense and most of the time it doesn’t help a damn thing, but you have to keep trying to figure stuff out, because—because people care about you, okay?”

“Kemper told me he could… do things to me. Before anyone came to help.”

“Fuck that guy, I don’t care if he might be your friend.”

Holden smiled then, a real smile. 

“Thanks, Bill.”

“Yeah, whatever," muttered the other agent gruffly, "let’s go to sleep. We’ve got to be at the airport by six.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Memory Lane by Elliott Smith. 
> 
> Idk I just wanted them to COMMUNICATE. My headcanon involves Holden concealing the fact that he fits all the markers they've been identifying in serial killers, and also, ultimately, Holden going to secret therapy with Wendy.


End file.
